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November 27, 2010 – At the next meeting of the Conference of
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(COP 16), which begins November 29 in Cancun, Mexico, the 192 member
states must agree on a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

However, on November 24, the president of the Ad-Hoc Working group
on Long-Term Action issued a new document that attempts to legitimise
the “Copenhagen Accord”, which the United Nations merely “took note of”
last December in Denmark.

This new document put forth by the president of the Ad-Hoc Working
Group, instead taking into account the proposals of all the parties put
forth during the process of negotiations, downplays the need for a
second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. [The latest document] was developed underwithout the mandate from the parties, and promotes emissions reductions by all
countries without clearly distinguishing between developed countries and
developing countries, leaving aside the fundamental principle of
“common but differentiated responsibilities” among nations.

Like the Copenhagen Accord, the document promotes a stabilisation of
the rise in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, ignoring the proposals of
those who have asserted that the temperature increase should be limited
to 1 or 1.5 degrees Celsius. It eliminates all of the proposals of the World
People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that took place last April in Bolivia, such as
the recognition of the rights of Mother Earth and the full application
of human rights principles, including the rights of Indigenous peoples
and climate migrants, in all climate-related actions. Other proposals
included the establishment of an International Climate Justice Tribunal
and the use of war and defence budgets by developed countries to
address the problem of global warming.

The new document goes even further than the “Copenhagen Accord” by
inviting the World Bank to administer the new climate fund, and limiting
financing for climate change to US$1 billion – ignoring the
proposal of the G77 and China to dedicate 1.5% of the GNP of developed
countries (the equivalent of $6 billion) to financing climate
change and the proposal of Bolivia to use 6% of of the GNP of developed
countries.

Said text openly promotes new market mechanisms and the establishment
of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation). These market mechanisms transfer the responsibility to
reduce emissions from developed countries to developing countries and,
in practice, signify the financing of developed countries by developing
countries.

The new document treats forests simply as carbon sinks and does not
guarantee the full participation of indigenous peoples and local
communities in forest management.

Regarding technology transfer, said text does not recognise the
proposal that intellectual property rights should not be an obstacle to
effective access to technology needed by developing countries to face
climate change.

On the topic of adaptation, it does not consider the institutional
framework proposed by developing countries to implement adaptation
actions using new and additional sources of financing beyond official development assistance (foreign aid).

In sum, the new text does not reflect the various proposals of the
G77 and China, nor does it take into account the proposals of the World
People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,
which represent the demands of the more than 35,000 delegates that
gathered last April in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

The Plurinational State of Bolivia believes that it is essential to
uphold the multilateral process at COP 16 and to avoid the emergence of
documents that have not been negotiated, as was the case last year in
Copenhagen.

Evo Morales laments exclusion of proposals from Cancún summit

By TeleSur

November 27, 2010 -- TeleSur via MRZine -- Bolivia's President Evo Morales lamented that his proposal
as well as that of Venezuela's leader Hugo Chávez, calling on the rich
countries to halve their greenhouse gas emissions, has not been welcomed
into the Cancún summit on climate change to be held next week.

Morales indicated at a press conference that the petitions to create a
Climate Justice Tribunal and to organise a global referendum on how to
solve the environmental crisis, submitted by a great majority of
nations, have been ignored.

The Bolivian leader said that the Cancún summit on climate change is
threatened by "a mercantilist vision of the developed countries".

"The rich countries have excluded, from the working papers, the ambitious proposals made by a world conference of social movements held in Bolivia last April,
in favour of the approaches that led to the failure of the previous
Copenhagen climate conference held in Denmark last December", Morales
emphasised.

Morales underscored that "the two commissions that met in Germany and
China to prepare the agenda have been sidelined by the introduction of
another agenda which is reminiscent of the analysis at the failed
Copenhagen Summit".

He said that great powers -- first of all the United States, one of
the major greenhouse gas emitters -- "want to commodify the earth and
use it for their own benefit without repairing the grave damage that
they have done to humanity by the emission of greenhouse gas that causes
global warming".

The Bolivian head of state believes that the Cancún Summit "ought to
be a historic, unprecedented event . . . but, for that to happen, an
alliance of governments with social forces of peoples is necessary,
because otherwise global warming will continue to get worse."

To make that happen, President Morales called upon the nations of the
world "to fight for life against capitalism, and for that we must unite
and coordinate actions of governments and social movements".

Evo Morales made clear his intention to stand side by side with
social movements in Cancún, in order to defend the proposals of some
countries that seek to guarantee the survival of the planet earth and of
humanity.

Morales reiterates his condemnation of US plans

The Bolivian leader also reiterated his condemnation of the US plans
to instigate coups against the member states of the Bolivarian Alliance
for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

He asserted that Venezuela is "now a target of Washington's plots".

Morales proposed that an ALBA meeting be held in Havana, Cuba or
Caracas, Venezuela before the end of this year, in order to "go on the
offensive and respond to US aggressions."

Which way for Cancun? From the Copenhagen Discord to the
Cochabamba Accord

By Pablo Solon, Bolivia's Ambassador to the United Nations, and Megan Morrissey, assistant to the ambassador

November 29, 2010 -- Cancun should be about those responsible for climate change
committing to reduce greenhouse gases. It sounds like a strange
thing to say. Unfortunately our experience in past climate talks
is that emission reductions is often the last thing discussed.
Instead valuable time is spent trying to shift responsibility
from those who have caused climate change to those suffering the effects,
and looking for ever more creative financial mechanisms for
multinational corporations to make profits from climate change.

These constant attempts to deviate from our critical task of
preventing runaway climate change were most starkly exposed at
the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. After days of
blocking any progress on the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally
binding agreement on climate change; the US, EU and a small
handful of hand-picked countries met in a secretive location to
draw up a voluntary agreement, misnamed the Copenhagen Accord.
Bolivia and many other nations opposed the Accord, because it
ignored the views of more than 160 countries and because it
would move us backwards rather than forward.

The UN's own research has shown that the Copenhagen Accord's
voluntary pledges would lead to temperature increases of 4
degrees Celsius -- a level that many scientists consider
disastrous for human life and our ecosystems. An internal report
by the EU of its own commitments suggested that, thanks to
various loopholes, the EU could actually increase its emissions
by 2.6% by 2020. This is hardly a step forward and is why the
Accord was rightly denounced by millions of people worldwide.

During the Copenhagen climate talks, President Evo Morales of
Bolivia observed that the best way to put climate change
solutions at the heart of the talks was to involve the people.
In contrast to much of the official talks, the hundreds of civil
society organisations, communities, scientists and faith leaders
present in Copenhagen clearly prioritised the search for
effective, just solutions to climate change against narrow
economic interests.

So Bolivia decided to put its words into action, and host a
Peoples Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
in April 2010. The summit in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba was
open to everyone, and was attended by more than 35,000 people
from more than 70 countries including representatives of 40
governments. More than 17 working groups developed innovative
and effective proposals to both reduce greenhouse gas reductions
and tackle the root causes of climate change. The Bolivian
government then agreed to formally present these demands within
the UNFCCC negotiations.

The Cochabamba Accord includes the following key demands:

1. 50 % reduction of greenhouse gas emission by 2017.

2. Stabilising temperature rises to 1C and 300 ppm.

3. Acknowledging the climate debt owed by developed countries.

4. Full respect for Human Rights and the inherent rights of Indigenous people.

5. Universal declaration of rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony with nature.

6. Establishment of an International Court of Climate Justice.

7. Rejection of carbon markets and commodification of nature and forests through the REDD program.

8. Promotion of measures that change the consumption patterns of developed countries.

9. End of intellectual property rights for technologies useful for mitigating climate change.

10. Allocation of 6% of developed countries' national gross product to actions related to addressing climate change.

The Cochabamba conference was inspiring in contrast to
Copenhagen, because no-one was excluded and because it put the
interests of stabilising the climate before the interests of
business and profit. As the Cancun talks start, there is a long
uphill road to climb if the UN is to re-emerge with its
credibility in responding to the most critical crisis humanity
has faced. The first step it could take is to stop listening to
the interests of powerful corporations and instead listen to the
demands of the peoples in Cochabamba.